Odysseus and Feminine Mêtis in the Odyssey Grace Lafrentz

Home , Calypso (mythology), Circe, Nostos, Penelope

Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal, Vol. 11

Weaving a Way to Nostos: Odysseus and Feminine Mêtis in the Odyssey Grace LaFrentz

Abstract. My paper examines the gendered nature of Odysseus’ mêtis, a Greek word describing characteristics of cleverness and intelligence, in Homer’s Odyssey. While Odysseus’ mêtis has been discussed in terms of his storytelling, disguise, and craftsmanship, I contend that in order to fully understand his cleverness, we must place Odysseus’ mêtis in conversation with the mêtis of the crafty women who populate the epic. I discuss weaving as a stereotypically feminine manifestation of mêtis, arguing that Odysseus’ reintegration into his home serves as a metaphorical form of weaving—one that he adapts from the clever women he encounters on his journey home from Troy. Athena serves as the starting point for my discussion of mêtis, and I then turn to Calypso and Circe—two crafty weavers who attempt to ensnare Odysseus on their islands. I also examine Helen, whom Odysseus himself does not meet, but whose weaving is importantly witnessed by Odysseus’ son Telemachus, who later draws upon the craft of weaving in his efforts to help Odysseus restore order in his home. The last woman I present is Penelope, whose clever and prolonged weaving scheme helps her evade marriage as she awaits Odysseus’ return, and whose lead Odysseus follows in his own prolonged reentry into his home. I finally demonstrate the way that Odysseus reintegrates himself into his household through a calculated and metaphorical act of weaving, arguing that it is Odysseus’ willingness to embrace a more feminine model of mêtis embodied by the women he encounters that sets him apart from his fellow male warriors and enables his successful homecoming.

In Homer’s Odyssey, the character Odysseus witness women exercising mêtis through their is closely associated with mêtis—a Greek word adoption of disguises, their singing and storytelling, that translates to “cleverness” (Käppel, 2006) and and, most importantly, their weaving. As a craft that describes the qualities of “intelligence, cunning, requires great skill and serves as a form of visual versatility, and a facility with words” (Murnaghan, storytelling, weaving exists as a powerful version 2000, p. xviii). While Odysseus’ mêtis has long been of mêtis that is exercised by women. Penelope’s recognized in his propensity for disguise, his ability woven mêtis is particularly important in ensuring to craft elaborate stories, and his powers of manual Odysseus’ successful homecoming, or nostos. In craftsmanship (such as his construction of a raft contrast to the infamous Clytemnestra, who uses to sail away from Calypso’s island) (Murnaghan, her mêtis to weave a web that ensnares her husband 2000, p. xviii), in order to fully understand the Agamemnon and transforms his homecoming into nature of Odysseus’ mêtis, we must place it into a bloodbath, Penelope famously uses her mêtis— conversation with the mêtis of the women who in the sense of both her cleverness and her manual populate the epic. For outside of Odysseus himself, craftsmanship—to weave and unweave a shroud, mêtis in the Odyssey most notably appears in thereby staving off her suitors and preserving her female figures; from the goddess Athena, to quasi- chastity for her husband’s eventual return. The divine figures such as Calypso, Circe, and Helen, ghost of Agamemnon in fact directly attributes to mortals like Odysseus’ own wife Penelope, we Odysseus’ successful homecoming to Penelope’s

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virtue and loyalty (24.202-6). It is possible to push order for Telemachus to kill the female slaves Agamemnon’s statement even further. Odysseus’ who dishonored him in his absence as an example successful homecoming depends not only on of Odysseus’ warrior brutality (Bowers, 2018, p. Penelope’s fidelity, but also on Odysseus’ own 825). While Odysseus’ violence at the end of the willingness to transcend the typical masculine epic is unequivocally brutal and excessive, it is not warrior mindset and embrace tactics more closely exclusively coded as masculine and does not wholly aligned with a feminine mode of mêtis. While fit into traditional methods of warrior violence. mêtis defines Odysseus long before his laborious Odysseus’ successful nostos depends upon his ability journey back to Ithaca (the well-known story of the to capitalize upon both his traditional warrior skills Trojan horse, for instance, reveals that Odysseus and his mêtis. It also depends on his willingness was devising cunning schemes long before to recognize when a version of mêtis coded as meeting clever women like Calypso and Circe), the feminine (such as weaving) is more appropriate women he encounters on his journey home from than a version of mêtis coded as masculine (such Troy provide him with an alternative, feminine as shipbuilding). Odysseus’ mêtis sets him apart model of mêtis most powerfully embodied by the from his Bronze Age warrior contemporaries like art of weaving. It is this stereotypically feminine Agamemnon, ultimately making him a hero better version of mêtis that Odysseus capitalizes upon suited to Homer’s own audience living in a society when he strategically weaves his way back that emphasized skill and the necessity for male into his household at the end of the Odyssey. and female collaboration in the service of the larger Before turning to the text itself, it is useful community. to establish a broader historical context for the Of all the characters in the Odyssey, mêtis Odyssey. Likely recorded in written form for is most powerfully associated with the goddess the first time around the eighth century BCE, the Athena—the epic’s preeminent deity. Athena’s Odyssey is set in the earlier world of Bronze Age mother (Zeus’ first wife) was in fact herself named Greece (Murnaghan, 2000, pp. lii-lv). Thalmann Metis (Käppel, 2006). After hearing the prophecy (1998) describes Greece’s move toward a polis- that “a son born of Metis” would overthrow him, based society in the “late eighth century BCE” (p. Zeus swallowed his wife, resulting in Athena’s birth 23), and we might imagine that Odysseus’ ability to from Zeus’ own head (Graf & Ley, 2006). Athena use not only strength, but intellectual savvy, would inherited her mother’s cleverness, resulting in her have served him well in a city-based civilization in association with skilled crafts such as metalworking, which skill was becoming an increasingly important shipbuilding, and weaving (Murnaghan, 2000, way to define one’s place. As Redfield (1983) notes, p. xxix). The figure of Athena thus highlights the in contrast to the purely “retrospective” nature of powerful link between mêtis and weaving—a craft Homer’s Iliad, the Odyssey simultaneously “looks practiced extensively by ancient Greek women. back on an heroic age already ended” and “looks Throughout the Odyssey, Athena exhibits her own forward” to the “post-heroic” world (p. 220). It is mêtis through her frequent use of disguise as well as Odysseus’ willingness to look beyond the warrior through the clever stratagems that she devises with code of violence and personal glory exhibited in Odysseus to help him defeat the suitors. Despite the Iliad and capitalize upon his cleverness and Athena’s apparent femininity, it is important to intelligence that powerfully links him to this post- draw attention to the fundamental androgyneity of heroic world. Bowers (2018) similarly recognizes the Olympian gods and goddesses. Neither male Odysseus as a “new kind of hero endowed with a nor female, Athena possesses the ability to assume broader range of attributes than those prized in the characteristics typically coded as feminine or Iliad,” but, consistent with scholarly consensus, masculine in order to serve her own needs and desires concludes that upon his nostos, Odysseus as well as those of her father, Zeus. As becomes reestablishes his masculine authority and identity as clear later in the Odyssey, while Odysseus himself warrior through his assertion of violence (pp. 825- is not androgynous, he shares Athena’s ability to 6). Following Saïd (2011), Bowers cites Odysseus’ capitalize upon mindsets, attributes, and versions

19 Vanderbilt Undergraduate Reseach Journal, Vol. 11 of mêtis associated with both genders. While this the potentially ensnaring nature of Circe’s mêtis. flexibility is one of Odysseus’ greatest strengths, Dangerous web-like weaving also takes center Odysseus’ experimentation with gender roles and stage in Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon, where norms ultimately serves, much like Athena’s, to the woven net that Clytemnestra devises to trap reinforce and reinstate the larger patriarchal system. Agamemnon is similarly referred to as a “spider’s Beyond the divine Athena, Odysseus web” (l. 1491). These references suggest the encounters several quasi-divine women on his extent to which female mêtis as exhibited through journey whose cleverness and craftsmanship shape weaving and storytelling is often associated with his own understanding of mêtis. Take, for example, clever plans invented by women to ensnare or Calypso and Circe—a nymph and an enchantress entrap men. There is a fine line between cleverness who live on magical islands set apart from both and deceptiveness; mêtis is a double-edged sword. the human world and the rest of the gods and While visiting Sparta, Odysseus’ son goddesses. The opening depictions of each of these Telemachus meets another quasi-divine female women emphasize their mêtis in the form of skillful weaver and storyteller—Menelaus’ infamous wife weaving. We first meet Calypso “seated inside, Helen. Though Odysseus himself does not encounter singing in a lovely voice/ As she wove at her loom Helen, she remains relevant to my discussion Humanities with a golden shuttle” (5.65-6), and Circe too first both because she serves as a powerful example of appears “singing in a lovely voice/ As she moved how female mêtis manifests itself in both skillful about weaving a great tapestry” (10.237-8). Mueller weaving and storytelling, and because Telemachus’ (2010) draws attention to the fact that Circe’s name actions at the end of the epic reveal that he, like his itself echoes the Greek word for shuttle, or kerkis father, has been influenced by the feminine models (p. 5). She furthermore uses the figures of Calypso of mêtis that he observes on his own miniature and Circe to propose an “analogy between song and odyssey. As Telemachus and the Spartans feast, the textile,” specifically in the transmission ofkleos , or narrator recounts that Helen weaves with a beautiful glory (Mueller, 2010, p. 6). Just as weavers weave “golden spindle” (4.137). Once the celebration fabric, lyric poets weave stories; weaving serves as turns to tears and lamentation for Odysseus’ plight, a material or visual form of storytelling. Storytelling Helen “thr[ows] a drug into the wine bowl” (4.232) is fittingly another central manifestation ofmêtis in to drive away the sadness before kicking off a round the Odyssey, and both Calypso and Circe emerge of storytelling. In this scene, Helen thus weaves as expert weavers of words as well as cloth. with both her hands and her words. By lacing the Despite the enchanting images of Calypso wine with drugs, Helen furthermore controls the and Circe, both women also present significant stories that are told and how they are received. Here threats to Odysseus, endangering his nostos by again, her mêtis is ambiguous. Is her manipulation using their language and sexual power to tempt of stories and memory beneficial or harmful? him to remain on their magical islands. Calypso, Menelaus follows Helen’s story with one of for example, spins an alluring story of the way that his own that affirms his wife’s mêtis. He recounts Odysseus could “stay here with [her], deathless” that once the wooden horse was brought into Troy, (5.207), rather than returning home to Penelope. Helen circled it, “call[ing] out the names/ Of all Circe similarly invites Odysseus to stay with her, the Argive leaders, making [her] voice/ Sound flattering him by calling him the “man of many like each of [their] wives’ in turn” (4.297-9). If we wiles” and inviting him to her bed (10.352-56). have already witnessed Helen’s quality of mêtis Both women know how to tempt Odysseus with exhibited through both her storytelling and manual their language—with the siren-like songs that craftsmanship, here we see her excelling in disguise they sing and the enticing verbal fictions that they as she manipulates the Greek soldiers with her weave. After hearing Circe’s bewitching voice and deceptive voice. The complex connection between witnessing her skillful weaving, one of Odysseus’ Helen, weaving, and storytelling also surfaces in men fittingly describes Circe as “weaving a the Iliad. In this epic, we first encounter Helen great web” (10.243)—a metaphor that reveals “weaving a folding mantle/ On a great loom” that

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depicts “The trials that the Trojans and Greeks had lead in his own prolonged reentry into his home. suffered” (3.127-9). In both theIliad and the Odyssey, Having outlined some of the most prominent Helen thus emerges as a master manipulator with examples of female mêtis in the Odyssey, we the power to control and construct narratives, both must now turn to the character Odysseus himself, spoken and woven. Drawing upon Nagy (2010), who similarly excels in the realms of disguise, who argues that in Homer’s works, “the act of storytelling, and craftsmanship. Given the plethora epic narration is figured metaphorically as an act of feminine examples of mêtis that pervade the of pattern-weaving” (p. 278), it becomes clear that Odyssey, it may at first seem strange to find mêtis Helen serves as a foil for the epic poet himself. as one of the defining characteristics of this warrior On the human level, mêtis also defines hero. What does it mean that Odysseus is known Odysseus’ own wife Penelope. We hear the famous more for his skill than for his strength, more for story of Penelope’s manipulative weaving for the his mind than for his body? While illustrations of first time in Book 2 of theOdyssey where Antinous Odysseus’ mêtis proliferate in the Odyssey, it is states that she tricked the suitors “for three years in the second half of the epic that Odysseus’ use with her craft” (2.115). Antinous also enumerates of feminine mêtis comes to the fore and where the many “gifts” bestowed upon Penelope by some potential answers to these questions lie. Athena including “Her talent for handiwork, her Athena herself powerfully articulates good sense,” and, above all, her “cleverness” Odysseus’ mêtis when he reaches Ithaca, (2.127-9). In these lines, Antinous articulates some establishing the centrality of this quality for of the key characteristics of mêtis by emphasizing Odysseus’ reintegration into his home. Upon Penelope’s craftsmanship and her crafty mind, meeting the disguised Athena, Odysseus protects and by tying her cleverness back to Athena. It is his identity by fabricating an elaborate story of worth noting that Penelope’s name itself means his past. Impressed by his quick thinking and “weaveress” (Harder, 2006)—a word that signals storytelling skills, Athena reveals herself and praises both Penelope’s skill with the loom and her ability Odysseus: “Here we are,/ The two shrewdest minds to weave intricate plans and tests. Penelope’s name in the universe,/ You far and away the best man on thus powerfully solidifies the connection between earth/ In plotting strategies, and I famed among mêtis as manifested through cleverness and mêtis gods/ For my clever schemes” (13.306-10). Mêtis as manifested through the craft of weaving. And unites Athena and Odysseus; she understands and like Calypso and Circe, Penelope also employs her appreciates his craftiness. After Athena celebrates weaving as a way to manipulate and exert power Odysseus’ mêtis, she states her intent to “weave a over men. Foley (1978) claims that “[l]ike Circe, plan” (13.314) with him—a sentiment echoed by Penelope has turned her guests into swine, into Odysseus later in this same conversation when he unmanly banqueters,” and suggests that just as beseeches Athena to “Weave a plan” (13.401) so he Circe halts Odysseus and his men by keeping them can pay back the suitors. In the original Greek, when on her island for a year, Penelope “symbolically Athena uses the verb “weave,” its subject is mêtis stop[s] change on Ithaca” by holding the suitors (Mueller, 2010, p. 3), linguistically establishing captive in her house and “prevent[ing] [them] the connection between the art of weaving and from maturing into husbands and warriors” (p. the plan that Odysseus and Athena formulate. 10). In prolonging her weaving of Laertes’ robe, It is this attention to weaving that Penelope thus suspends time and keeps the suitors distinguishes Odysseus’ mêtis upon reaching in a kind of limbo, just as Calypso and Circe Ithaca from the mêtis that he demonstrates in tempt Odysseus to remain indefinitely upon their earlier instances such as the Trojan War. On his islands. All three of these women capitalize upon journey home, Odysseus repeatedly encounters weaving as a distinctly female form of mêtis that crafty weavers whose skills with words and cloth allows them to exert agency. Penelope’s prolonged demonstrate the power of an alternative, feminine and clever weaving trick enables her evasion of model of mêtis. Odysseus recognizes the potential the suitors, and Odysseus ultimately follows her of this woven mêtis and is willing to metaphorically

21 Vanderbilt Undergraduate Reseach Journal, Vol. 11 incorporate it into his own schemes. Odysseus’ mêtis stored the robe that Helen gave Telemachus to is not constant or stagnant across the epic, and part of leave with Penelope for safekeeping (p. 14). In what makes him so clever is his ability to recognize any event, Odysseus’ bow shares a symbolic space which version of cleverness best suits him at any with woven robes tangibly tied to female mêtis. given moment. When leaving Calypso’s island, Odysseus’ use of the bow furthermore for instance, Odysseus employs a stereotypically suggests the extent to which he fights not only masculine version of mêtis when he “skillfully” with sheer masculine force, but also with skill and creates a raft—a piece of manual craftsmanship calculation. When Odysseus strings his bow, Homer that transports him from the island (5.244). When provides the reader with an extraordinary simile: Odysseus reaches Ithaca, however, he realizes that a different kind of cleverness is required of him. Like a musician stretching a string He thus draws upon the mêtis he has witnessed in Over a new peg on his lyre, and making figures like Circe and Calypso, whose weaving, The twisted sheep-gut fast at either end, according to Foley (1978), “retard[s] or conquer[s] Odysseus strung the great bow. Lifting it up, change” (p. 14). Athena’s and Odysseus’ deliberate He plucked the string, and it sang beautifully plan is similarly designed to be implemented slowly Under his touch, with a Humanities and carefully. As opposed to Agamemnon, who note like a swallow’s. (21.432-7) arrives home and immediately bursts through the front door, Odysseus uses his mêtis to collaborate The reference to Odysseus’ bow singing like a with Athena, crafting a plan that allows him to swallow primes readers for the simile in Book 22 methodically weave himself back into the fabric of likening Athena to a swallow (22.255), thereby his household. As a stereotypical male adhering to solidifying the connection between Odysseus’ mêtis the warrior code of honor and glory, Agamemnon and the goddess of mêtis herself. More importantly, is unwilling to prolong his kleos. Odysseus, on the however, in these lines Homer compares Odysseus’ other hand, understands the merit of taking one’s bow to a lyre—a particularly resonant simile time. He begins by testing slaves like Eumaeus and in light of the fact that the suitors’ current feast Eurycleia and slowly and carefully works his way to celebrates Apollo, the god of both archery and Penelope. He embraces and capitalizes upon a more music. The presentation of Odysseus as a bard fits feminine mode of mêtis embodied by weaving. with his larger role as storyteller in the Odyssey (in It might at first appear that after successfully addition to the various backstories that Odysseus and craftily weaving his way back into his home, the fabricates for himself once he reaches Ithaca, Books test of the bow and Odysseus’ subsequent violence 9-12 of the Odyssey are of course all an extended against the suitors definitively reestablish male story narrated by Odysseus). The swineherd violence and authority. While the violence at the end Eumaeus in fact describes that Odysseus’ powerful of the Odyssey certainly restores Odysseus to his storytelling skills render him enrapt and spellbound, identity as a warrior, several details in the text reveal “just as when men gaze at a bard” (17.564). that he remains attuned to the enduring applicability It is possible to stretch this striking simile of a more feminine version of mêtis. Firstly, the test even further, drawing a connection between lyres, of the bow is Penelope’s idea (19.628) and can thus bows, and looms. Muller (2010) highlights that be linked to her own distinctive mêtis. Secondly, it looms and lyres share mechanical similarities (p. is Penelope who controls access to Odysseus’ bow, 6)—both are constructed from wooden frames that which she retrieves from a “remote storeroom” full hold strings. And in a metaphorical sense, both lyres of Odysseus’ “bronze, gold,/ And wrought iron,” as and looms serve as instruments for the weaving of well as “chests/ Filled with fragrant clothes” (21.7- stories (think, for instance, of Ovid’s Philomela, 9, 50). Considering that Penelope possesses the key who uses weaving to visually convey the story of to this space, it is possible that this storeroom is the her brutal rape [Mueller, 2010, p. 6]). It is productive location that Mueller (2010) identifies as Penelope’s here to place Odysseus’ bow into conversation with megaron—the room where she would also have the loom and the lyre (compare Figures 1-4 below).

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On a structural level, the bow shares with these two With the suitors” (22.467-9). Odysseus invokes a technologies important similarities in construction stereotypically masculine method of killing when (i.e. wood frame and string). Additionally, the way he tells Telemachus to murder the women with that Odysseus sends his arrow “clean through the swords; it appears that we are about to witness the holes of all twelve axeheads” (21.449) (see Figure 4) restoration of patriarchal order by way of masculine parallels the way that weavers pass a shuttle through violence exacted upon female slaves. Telemachus, the threads of a loom in the creation of fabric (see however, does not follow Odysseus’ orders. He Figure 1). Through the use of his bow, Odysseus deems the death that Odysseus orders too “clean,” metaphorically continues to weave—continues instead “t[ying] the cable of a dark-prowed ship/ to employ feminine mêtis. Odysseus’ bow serves To a great pillar and pull[ing] it about the round as a key element of his strategy to carefully and house” and hanging the women from this cable skillfully weave himself back into his household. (22.485-90). In one of the most horrific similes Even once Odysseus has successfully in the Odyssey, the narrator describes that just as strung the bow and begun to exact revenge on the birds “fall into a snare set in a thicket,” “So too suitors, Homer continues to employ language that these women, their heads hanging in a row,/ The ties Odysseus’ violence to weaving. After Antinous cable looped around each of their necks” (22.492- falls to the ground, the suitors still do not realize 5). While this episode might at first appear to that Odysseus had “shot to kill”; they have “no epitomize male violence exacted upon powerless idea how tightly the net/ Ha[s] been drawn around females, the symbolic snare that Telemachus them” (22.34-6). The image of a tightly drawn devises bears eerie similarities to the art of weaving. net recurs just a few lines later (22.44). Nets in Telemachus’ brutal method of murder, like the Odyssey have thus far been associated with Odysseus’ bow test, serves as a metaphorical act Circe, who weaves a metaphorical web in which of weaving. Telemachus strings the twelve women she traps Odysseus and his men, and Penelope, onto one cable, just as Odysseus shoots his arrow who weaves a literal shroud she uses to stymie through the holes of the twelve axeheads, both the suitors. The image of Odysseus casting a net actions symbolically paralleling the movement of a over the suitors symbolically aligns him with shuttle through a loom. The cable that Telemachus these clever and crafty women who lure their prey uses furthermore ties his snare to both the craft into woven traps. Odysseus thus demonstrates of weaving and the craft of shipbuilding (the his willingness to marry warrior violence with cable comes from a ship prow); recall that both of cleverness and skill; even once he has successfully these crafts are associated with Athena and with passed the bow test, we see the way that his mêtis. And just as the narrator describes the trap fighting is filtered through his new understanding that Odysseus devises for the suitors as a “net,” of a more feminine or woven version of mêtis. Telemachus’ trap for the slave girls serves as its own Telemachus’ violence at the end of the kind of net that physically encircles the house. In Odyssey reveals the way that he too has learned this scene of sickening violence, Telemachus, like the value of mêtis, particularly in its stereotypically Odysseus, demonstrates his ability to appropriate feminine manifestation of weaving. Redfield feminine mêtis in his restoration of patriarchal (1983) notes that part of the way the Odyssey order. Telemachus carries out his extreme, “looks forward” is by providing the audience misogynist violence against the enslaved women with Odysseus’ heir (p. 220), and at the end of the in a way that shows his attention to the craft of Odyssey we see the way that Telemachus emerges weaving modeled by Penelope, Helen, and the way as not just Odysseus’ biological heir, but also an that his father metaphorically weaves his way back heir to his mêtis. In one of the Odyssey’s most into his household. Telemachus’ actions, while brutal episodes, Odysseus orders that Telemachus unequivocally abhorrent, must be recognized as kill the twelve female slaves who slept with the standing apart from typical warrior violence in the suitors in his absence: “Slash them with swords/ way that they draw upon the feminine craft of weaving. Until they have forgotten their secret lovemaking/ Telemachus’ murder of the enslaved women

23 Vanderbilt Undergraduate Reseach Journal, Vol. 11 becomes all the more brutal when we recognize ends, this appropriation implicitly and importantly that he perversely kills these women in a manner recognizes the power of female words and weaving. reminiscent of the very craft that they would have In the final books of theOdyssey , Odysseus’ carried out on a daily basis. Thalmann (1998) identification with a feminine mode of mêtis as discusses the “crucial division of social space in exemplified by weaving may raise questions about Homeric society” whereby “[m]en work outside [of his masculinity. Is there something feminine about the house] and compete for honor” and “[w]omen Odysseus? Is he perhaps androgynous like Athena? stay in the house and maintain their families’ honor,” Foley (1978) discusses moments of gender fluidity participating in domestic crafts like weaving (p. or inversion in the Odyssey, drawing attention 27). Telemachus complicates this binary or division to a series of inverted gender similes describing both by bringing the women outside of the space Odysseus that she claims fit into a “larger pattern of of the home and by killing them not as a male social disruption and restoration in the epic” (p. 8). warrior typically would, but in a way that recalls Foley concludes that the “continual play with social the craft that they practiced inside the home. There and sexual categories in the poem results not in is no need for Telemachus to subject the women social change but in a more flexible interpretation to a death this elaborate; he could have simply of social roles” (Foley, 1978, p. 9). The play with Humanities killed them with swords as his father suggested. mêtis in the Odyssey serves a similar function; His method of murder reveals his sadistic desire Odysseus’ and Telemachus’ use of feminine mêtis to further humiliate the enslaved women by killing does not completely upend gender roles or norms, them with their own craft, so to speak. It also but it does offer readers a glimpse of a world highlights the lessons that he has learned from where men fight not only with their swords, but Odysseus. Like his father, Telemachus blurs the with skillful stratagems. In adopting the feminine boundaries between typical gender roles and norms, quality of mêtis, Odysseus ultimately embraces a employing whichever methods best serve his needs more malleable understanding of gender roles. and desires in the restoration of masculine order. What Odysseus shares with Athena is At the end of the poem, Odysseus and not androgyneity, but rather the willingness to his son Telemachus reestablish male order in the capitalize upon whichever methods best serve one’s household, but they do so in a way that represents interests in the moment, regardless of whether their understanding of the power and applicability of these methods are coded as masculine or feminine. a more feminine mode of mêtis, as exhibited by the Athena is associated with both the masculine craft of various women present in their lives and journeys. shipbuilding and the feminine craft of weaving, for It is important to recognize, however, the way that instance, and in the Odyssey, Odysseus engages in the they appropriate this feminine mêtis in the service former physically and in the latter metaphorically. of their restoration of a patriarchal household, just In a larger sense, Odysseus’ capacity to embrace as Athena uses her own cleverness in the service both feminine and masculine mêtis fits with what of her father Zeus. Odysseus’ and Telemachus’ use Dougherty (2015) identifies as his tendency to of mêtis at the end of the Odyssey thus emerges as experiment with and improvise his identity in order ambiguous: on the one hand, it affirms the power of to protect himself (p. 116). Just as he can efface his feminine mêtis (specifically as manifested through name and assume the disguise of a beggar (a “form weaving); but on the other hand, father and son of self-denial that most heroes could not tolerate” appropriate this female form of agency in order [Murnaghan, 2000, p. xix]), Odysseus can suppress to advance their own misogynist and patriarchal his masculine warrior identity and experiment goals. Despite these complications, however, with feminine mêtis. But he also recognizes the fact Odysseus and Telemachus recognize the when masculine methods are appropriate; recall applicability of female cleverness and themselves the image of the net that Odysseus tightly draws implement modified versions of it is itself significant. around the suitors. This woven trap, which we Even if we understand Odysseus and Telemachus might code as feminine, provides Odysseus with as employing feminine mêtis to serve their own the opportunity to exercise his masculine battle

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skills. And after he runs out of arrows, which in consistent with the mêtis of the wife on whom his the contest of the bow metaphorically tie him successful nostos depends. So, he weaves a plan to the distinctly feminine practice of weaving, with Athena, he slowly reintegrates himself into his Odysseus begins to fight with spears (22.124-9)— household through clever disguises and tests, and the weapon of choice for Greek male warriors. he first asserts his authority with a bow rather than a Odysseus’ successful homecoming is spear. Odysseus’ heroism remains complicated and enabled not only by his wife Penelope, but also ambiguous, and we should certainly question the by his willingness to embrace Penelope’s version way that he uses mêtis to restore masculine order. of mêtis. Unlike his fellow warrior, Agamemnon, His ultimate strength and success, however, lie in his who remains trapped within a rigid and masculine unique ability to understand that the warrior code is warrior mindset, Odysseus understands that there not the only way. It can at times be supplemented, are other ways to be and to succeed in the world. The or even replaced, by alternate modes of thinking cunning female figures that he encounters along his and acting—modes that may even be coded as journey present him with some of these alternatives; feminine. In the character of Odysseus, Homer his interactions with these women teach him that if provides a hero for a new age—one that requires he wants to be successful, he must be able to grow, skill and the collaboration between men and women adapt, and embrace different versions of mêtis. By to ensure the success of society. In the Odyssey, the time he arrives on Ithaca, Odysseus enters a Homer ultimately suggests that the greatest heroes space over which his wife has held control since are those who are willing to transcend societal and he left for Troy. In his absence, Penelope has used gender norms and weave their own way to kleos. the variations of mêtis accessible to her (primarily craftiness and trickery through weaving) in order to Acknowledgements protect herself and her home. Odysseus realizes that his home has changed in his absence; he realizes that he cannot saunter through the front door and This project was done under the mentorship immediately resume his position as father, husband, of Dr. Chiara Sulprizio. and king. He must be wary. He must devise a plan

Figure 1. The image on this vase portrays two women working at a loom. The women almost appear to be weaving arrows through the loom’s threads, much as Odysseus sends his own arrow through the axes in the bow contest.

Attributed to the Amasis Painter. (ca. 550-530 B.C.). Terracotta lekythos (oil flask). [Lekythos, Vases]. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Retrieved from https://library-artstor-org.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/asset/ SS7731421_7731421_11408602.

25 Vanderbilt Undergraduate Reseach Journal, Vol. 11 Humanities

Figure 2. This vase depicts two more women weaving. The woman on the right holds a hand loom that is closer in size and construction to a lyre than the large loom in the previous image.

Painter of the Louvre Centauromachy. (c. 460-440 BCE). Pyxis showing A seated Woman Holding a Spindle and a standing Woman Holding a Hand Loom (Women inside a house engaged in weaving and other household activities). [Ce- ramics]. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France. Retrieved from https://library-artstor-org.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/asset/ ARMNIG_10313261307.

Figure 3. The man on this vase plays a lyre. The strings on the lyre resemble those of a loom, and the lyre’s curved frame echoes that of a bow.

Attributed to Chairias Painter. (last quarter 6th Century BCE). Cup with Young Man at a Banquet Playing a Lyre. [Ceram- ics]. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France. Retrieved from https://library-artstor-org.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/asset/ ARMNIG_10313261762.

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Figure 4. This image depicts Odysseus about to launch his arrow in the contest of the bow. The shape of the bow in this image recalls the shape of the lyre in the previous image.

Penelope Painter (active. c. 450-420 BCE). (c. 450-440 BCE). Skyphos (Cup) with Odysseus as Archer, detail. [Vessel]. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Antikensammlung, Berlin, Germany. Retrieved from https:// library-artstor-org.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/asset/LESSING_ART_10310751363

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